by Craig Hordlow, Chief Search Strategist

Google recently declared war, and when a company as powerful as Google declares war, it is a cause for alarm.

Google declared war on the buying and selling of text links that affect Google search results.

In order to understand Google’s war motive, one must understand the basics of Google’s ranking algorithm.

An important, if not essential, component to an SEO (search engine optimization) campaign (for many, but not all, websites) is the acquisition of external links. Google ranks websites largely based on Larry Page’s (Google co-founder) “PageRank” algorithm, which assigns a value (1 to 10) to a webpage. Google defines PageRank as the “measure of importance” of a webpage, 10 being perfect. The higher the PageRank, the more likely a webpage will rank well for relevant keywords. (You can see your PageRank by installing the Google Toolbar.

Simplistically stated, a Google PageRank score is determined by the number of links pointing to a website. Therefore, the more links, the better.

Search engine marketers, aware of the value of links, seek to acquire links through a variety of tactics, ranking from press releases, link trades, to link purchases.

Perhaps the easiest way to acquire links is by purchasing them. Link brokers have built lucrative businesses by creating a marketplace for buyers and sellers. A serendipitous, unconscious, and charming contribution these brokers make is that they enable revenue for virtually anyone with a website. Publishers such as small town and college newspapers, non-profits, and bloggers, suddenly found themselves generating a reliable and comfortable monthly income.

These purchased links work. Smart link purchases result in higher search engine ranking, and this fact, once only an irritation to Google, has grown into a serious threat that Google is now determined to combat (see http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/ for more details).

Google is determined to solve the problem algorithmically, meaning, it wants its robots to be able to identify purchased links (rather than manually policing the trade). Purchased links are often times published in square boxes in list form, sometimes even incriminatingly labeled as “sponsors”. Google is crafting its algorithm to detect these kinds of “fingerprints”.

And as Google evolves its ability to identify and disqualify purchased links, link brokers are also evolving their tactics of masking paid links by re-formatting the manner in which the links are published.

So what does a search engine marketer intent on buying links need to know?

If you are going to buy links (which I must say is considered an ethical dilemma by some, but addressed in an upcoming newsletter!), you need to be aware of the factors that Google is likely evaluate in order to identify paid links. Here is a short list:
* Site wide links
* Links published in a list format (“block level analysis”)
* Links that are labeled (in text) as “sponsored”
* Links that have a link back to the link broker
* Links on sites that are publicly listed on link broker websites

Link purchases need to be tested. Marketers buying links must benchmark their ranking before their link purchase.

Once the benchmark has been established, it is wise to buy links in small increments.

Here’s an example.

Your website ranks #14 for the term “enterprise gold widget”.

You evaluate the PageRank, onsite optimization, and incoming links to the top ranking sites (let’s not open that can of worms) and decide to spend $800 / month on links. You make the purchase, and within 3 weeks, you are ranking #6.

You increase the monthly spend to $1200. Your site is now ranking #4. You keep incrementally adding budget until you are number one (and, obviously, you must be sure that the value of resulting traffic exceeds your spend. I’ll discuss this in another newsletter post).

Buying links is an evolving art form. This is a battle between thousands of brilliant PhD’s at Google and search engine marketers.
One should not dabble in the practice, and link buyers must be tracking the efficacy of their purchase like a day trader tracks the movement of their stock investments.

The last paragraph should cause you to ask yourself a question:

“If I am in some kind of battle with Google, is this bad? Is this unethical? Do I really want to do this?”

I am going to address those issues in the next newsletter, but I will leave you with one last comment:

The irony that Google is generating billions of dollars by selling text links, and trying to control others who do the same is not lost on the SEM community. I will write about that in my next newsletter: (“The Hubris of Google”).

Stay tuned for…
* The Hubris of Google & the Ethics of Buying Links
* Using Analytics to Determine ROI by Organic KW
* Getting More Out of Your #1 Ranking
* Inside of Google’s Algorithm

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 1:01 pm and is filed under Craig Hordlow, External Links, Google, Google PageRank, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.